


a shade of blue and a signal fire

by dirty_diana



Category: Immortal Iron Fist, Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 10:54:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25848406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirty_diana/pseuds/dirty_diana
Summary: Danny launches into a story about a monk from K'un Lun who walked a thousand miles to see his reflection in a lake. He gets all the way to the end of it, before Ward figures out that Danny's trying to tell her that maybe he's ready to go home.The first thing Ward thinks is that she has no idea what to do now.
Relationships: Ward Meachum/Danny Rand
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: Rule 63 Exchange 2020





	a shade of blue and a signal fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kameiko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kameiko/gifts).



> beta by dani <3.

Danny's crusade reaches its end in Vientiane.

They arrive in the city late at night. Ward goes to bed in their shared hotel room, but she doesn't sleep. She lies on her back, swiping at pictures on her phone. They're photos that trace the path they've been charting, endless shipping yard containers and old temples and artefacts covered in script Ward can't read.

Interspersed are the dumb selfies that Danny has been making her take. Her hair is up in almost all of them, because it's been too hot for anything else. Mostly, she's scowling. Danny is smiling widely in every photo, as if each thousand-year-old building or multi-coloured sunset is the greatest entertainment he's ever encountered.

Ward still can't relax. Danny is in the next bed, snoring lightly. She kind of hates sharing a room, even with someone as neat and amiable as Danny. But she's gotten used to it, and the way he never shuts up unless he's sleeping.

Sometimes not even then. Danny mumbles something unintelligible, rolling over without opening his eyes. Ward wonders what he's dreaming about.

*

Ward thinks maybe Orson Randall is a little bit of a disappointment. Danny doesn't say so out loud. They've been searching for Randall for months. He's the only still-living Iron Fist, besides Colleen. But he's nothing like Colleen, or Danny. He's washed up and bitter, and a little drunk when Danny and Ward find him. He's hoarding artefacts from K'un Lun, probably since before Ward was born, but he doesn't seem to have any particular reason except that he hates K'un Lun and everything he was taught there.

That part Ward respects. Danny still thinks fondly of his second home, even though Ward can't work out from any of Danny's stories what was so great about it. He holds on to the guns on his belts, and Orson, after talking to Danny a little longer, doesn't seem to want them back.

"Funny, you don't look like over a hundred years old," Ward says to Orson Randall. Danny had Captain America posters on his wall when he was little, and a plastic shield that glowed in the dark. But Randall is even older than Steve Rogers is, if the stories they found of an Iron Fist fighting in World War I are true. Randall just grins, for the first time since they walked into the dive bar that he's been drinking in. It reeks of old beer.

"You have a sidekick, that's good," Randall says to Danny.

Ward glowers at him. "I'm not his fucking sidekick." 

Randall is still talking. He points at Danny with the hand that holds his beer. "All that stuff they taught us, the warrior walks alone? It's all bullshit meant to keep you from thinking too hard. You remember that."

"Tell me about the artefacts," Danny replies. That's when there's an interruption the conversation. The bar's plate window shatters, and then black-clad ninjas pour in one after the other. There's shouting, enough of it in English for Ward to gather that Danny's not the only one interested in Randall's collection. Randall's fist curls and lights up. Danny draws his weapons, and in the glint coming off them Ward can see a familiar expression come over him. The one he gets when he's using the guns, and their chi is flowing back into him, or some mystical shit. Danny's tried to explain it. Ward just does what she usually does when Danny is in a fight, which is get the fuck out of the way.

*

Randall doesn't know how to create the artefacts. He claims he only collects them, except for once, the time he made the guns that Danny is holding.

"That was a long time ago, kid," he says. He looks old now, and very tired, standing in a room full of fallen ninjas.

"Those artefacts aren't yours," Danny says.

"Someone has to look after them. Can't exactly send them back."

Of course he can't. K'un Lun is gone. Danny just nods.

*

They're eating breakfast the next morning when Danny tells her that he thinks he's done what he came here to do.

"What about that gang from last night?"

"They weren't looking for me."

Ward rolls her eyes. "Yeah, they were looking for the chi guns, Danny. Which you have."

Danny shrugs like that doesn't matter. Even without the strength of the iron fist he can be cocky about his skills. He curls his fists, then wiggles his fingers and grins. "If they come for me, fine. But I won't go looking for them."

"Where will you--we--go, then?"

Danny launches into a story about a monk from K'un Lun who walked a thousand miles to see his reflection in a lake. He gets all the way to the end of it, before Ward figures out that Danny's trying to tell her that maybe he's ready to go home.

The first thing Ward thinks is that she has no idea what to do now.

What she says is, "Thank fuck. I was worried you were going to make me rob another stupa."

"We weren't robbing. We were doing research," Danny says. It's such effortless Danny-logic. He smiles as he says it. Ward realises her eyes are burning.

*

"I'll meet you back at the hotel," Ward says. Dishes clatter on the table as she stands up in a rush. 

"I can come with you," Danny says.

"Danny!" Ward raises her voice. "Can I get five fucking minutes to myself?"

"Yeah. Sure." Danny's face collapses. He looks hurt and confused, and Ward feels bad about it but mostly she just needs to get out of there. 

She makes it two blocks away before she starts crying. She falls onto a patch of park grass, in the shadow of a cluster of tall trees. The nearby locals look up, but then they look away again, and pretend not to see her at all.

Ward folds herself into a ball with her head on her knees, and the tears keep coming, forming twin wet spots on her dark blue jeans. She's been on this trip with Danny for seven months, and she'd known it wouldn't last forever. But she'd realised somewhere between Shanghai and Singapore that every time she tries to imagine herself back in the numbing daily grind of Rand, she starts to feel cold all over.

*

Danny finds her about ten minutes later. "Hey," he says, and then he sits down beside her on the grass. He doesn't say anything, just puts one hand on her back between her shoulder blades and lets it linger there, comforting and warm. 

Ward finally looks up. She wipes her eyes with the hem of her short-sleeved cotton shirt. "Only girls cry about their feelings," she mutters, half to herself.

Danny gives her a funny look. His eyes are bright, pinning her with an intensity that makes Ward want to duck away. "First of all, that's not remotely true. Second of all, you're a girl, Ward."

"Don't remind me," Ward snaps. It doesn't come out as sharp as she means it to.

"Did Harold say that a lot?" Danny asks, after a long pause.

"Fuck you," Ward answers. Which Danny probably takes as a yes.

Danny is quiet, and then he tries again. "I don't remember a lot about Harold back then. Maybe I should, but it's mostly just my parents. And you, and Joy. I remember Joy cried a lot."

"She was a brat," Ward says, remembering.

"Yeah. Did she get yelled at?" When Ward doesn't answer, Danny says, "Sounds like maybe it wasn't really about the crying, then."

"If you try some fucking meditation technique with me right now." Ward scowls at him.

Danny laughs, light and musical, and Ward realises she's stopped crying. Danny's still touching her, his face close to his.

She explains a little then, how she misses New York but doesn't really want to go back there yet.

"But Bethany would probably say I'm, whatsit? Replacing." When Danny frowns, she adds, "That I'm focusing on this, the way I used to focus on drugs."

She knows, as she says it, that that's not quite right. Danny nods.

"I don't know anything about all that," he says. "But I do know I've had a good time. It hasn't felt like, uh. Replacing."

His face is so close to hers now, that it would barely take any motion at all for their faces to touch. His hand has moved up to brush the stray hair that has fallen out of her messy updo. Behind them a little kid shrieks laughter into the sunshine.

"That's because we keep almost getting killed. You love that shit."

"I would never have let anything happen to you," Danny says, very seriously. Ward doesn't know what to say to that.

*

It's not like Ward didn't already know she had a crush on Danny. It's just something she knows better than to think about most of the time. But Danny's nice, even if he's weird, and he says her name like she's a real person that he actually enjoys talking to. Which puts him above pretty much every other guy Ward has ever met, not to mention half her family. Most guys just write Ward off as hot but kind of crazy, not worth dealing with long-term. It's not like Ward can really say that they're wrong.

Danny takes her seriously. He also still talks to Colleen Wing almost every morning. Colleen messages him before she goes on patrol each night in Chinatown. Ward doesn't know what they talk about. Probably kung fu, and crime fighting, and all the things Ward doesn't know anything about.

*

That night, Danny stops talking about going home. Instead he starts talking about museums, and architecture, the most famous skyscrapers on the planet. He stumbles over half of the names.

"Danny, why are you talking like you memorised a Wikipedia article?"

He flops next to her on her unmade hotel bed. "I just thought maybe you'd want to see some of them. That's one of your things, right? Art?"

Ward shrugs. She's never really had any things, besides drugs and the disaster that's her family. "I guess. What's your point?"

"That I promised you a journey. We've spent a lot of time on my stuff, but not really any time on your stuff."

Ward shifts a little at that, and the mattress of the hotel bed they're sprawled on together bounces under her weight. The thought that Danny has been trying to guess at something that she doesn't even know herself makes her tense up. "There was a list on Golf Digest," she says. "One hundred best golf courses in the world. We could start at number one hundred and work our way down."

Danny nudges her with his elbow. "You know that's not what I mean." Ward just looks at him, and Danny adds, "But if you really want to golf, I guess we can do that."

She doesn't, really. Ward stares up at the ceiling. Danny's breathing softly next to her. "I thought you wanted to go home," she says to him. 

"I can do that any time," Danny points out. "New York's not going anywhere. I want to go wherever you want to go." He sounds like he really means it.

*

Before they've decided what's next, Orson Randall comes to see Danny. He brings a book. It glows like there's a fire burning inside it, the same odd light that Danny's fist used to give off.

"The Book of the Iron Fist?" Danny repeats. "I've never heard of it."

"Yeah, there's lots they didn't tell you, kid."

Danny bristles at Randall calling him a kid, but he seems to recognise the book for the irreplaceable item that it is. 

"Are those…scales?" Ward asks of the shimmery pages.

"The secrets of the Iron Fist were written in a book bound from the scales of Shou-Lau the Undying," Randall answers, matter-of-fact even as Ward makes a face at how fucking weird that is.

"An Iron Fist should be the one to have this. I'm not one anymore." Danny tries to hand it back to him.

"I'll find you when I'm ready to have it back," Randall says in response, which doesn't really tell them anything at all. Ward is starting to get the sense that that's just how Randall is all the time. "In the meantime, maybe it'll help you understand what I've been trying to tell you.."

"Can I take a look?" Ward asks, when Randall is gone. 

"Sure," Danny says, though Ward can tell by his hesitation that he mostly says it not to be rude. He watches closely as Ward turns the delicate, ancient pages. "You can't read Chinese," he reminds her.

Ward shakes her head, not really listening. "No. But I can read a lot of other things."

"Yeah. Okay," Danny says.

Ward looks at the book for a long time. Then she gets a pad of paper and a pen out of the hotel drawer.

*

It takes her all night to stitch together a pad full of notes and diagrams from the markings on the pages. Danny wakes with the sun, something he does no matter where they are, and rolls closer to her to peer at her work. He'd fallen asleep on her bed, curled on the pillow, and Ward had found she didn't want to disturb him.

"What's that?" he asks, yawning.

"A map."

"A map of where?"

"Not sure. But from Google, it matches a route in Nepal," Ward answers. "Through the Himalayas."

"Google," Danny repeats under his breath, sitting up and shifting over, all the way into her space. "Okay. Where is it a map to?"

Ward picks up the book and points to a set of characters she's seen repeated throughout. "I think maybe here."

Danny looks at it for a moment. "The Heart of the Sky," he says. "Or heaven. Heaven's Heart?"

Ward shrugs. "I think it's a place. And I think it leads here." She flips the lead of her notepad, and turns more pages in the Book of the Iron Fist. Danny looks at the path her finger traces, to a symbol she recognises, and knows that he does too.

It's his tattoo. "Shou-Lao?" he asks.

"Is that the only thing it means?" Ward asks.

"No. It stands for the whole city, I guess? Like the Iron Fist does."

"It means K'un Lun," Ward says. She'd guessed as much, somewhere in the middle of the night. There were more paths in the book, and more symbols that marked some kind of destination, but Danny's eyes glanced over them as if they were meaningless to him.

"K'un Lun's gone."

"Maybe you just used the wrong door." Ward doesn't even know why she cares about this, except that Danny cares. "Randall said the book would be full of secrets."

Danny bends over the book, studying the script more closely. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure it's a map," Ward says. "Beyond that…" her words trail off.

*

Danny reads the book himself all day. He stops every now and then to demonstrate some new technique he's found, once almost breaking the hotel lamp in process.

"The black-black poison touch," he tells her afterwards, and then goes back to reading.

When he's done, he stands up. His eyes are shining with the promise of a new adventure. "Yeah," he says. "I think maybe you're onto something."

*

It takes them a day to get to Kathmandu, and another three to get to the town at the base of what the locals call the Dragon's Path. "You're looking for the city?" every local who can speak English asks them, though no one looks very interested in the answer. Ward gets the impression that they're not the first Westerners to come through here, talking about a mystical sky city. 

Ward wonders how many of them came back.

The only hotel in town is small but clean. The owner calls her Mrs Rand, showing them to a room with only one bed, and Ward can't be bothered to correct her. They walk to the edge of the town the night before they leave studying the path in the mountain that's covered by snow.

"We can still turn around," Danny says. He doesn't really sound like he wants to.

"We can," Ward agrees. "But I think something's up there. We could find out what."

"I've seen this," Danny says, sighing a little. His breath is a white plume in front of him. It's snowing, light but steady, and Danny doesn't want to leave the town until it stops. "I've climbed mountains, and I've sailed cargo ships. I know what it looks like when someone is just, kind of. Making up an adventure to chase so they don't have to go home."

"I'm not making things up," Ward says defensively, though she's not sure if Danny was talking about her or himself. Maybe this is the craziest thing she's ever done, but she's made up her mind and she's willing to follow where Danny's book leads. Even to K'un Lun, if that's where Danny wants to go. She'll go with him.

She says as much, and finds Danny staring at her when she stops talking. There's a small glint of the moon reflected in his eyes in the darkness.

He kisses her. The air around them is freezing cold, but Danny's lips are warm as they brush against hers. It doesn't last long.

"You have a girlfriend," Ward says dumbly, as they break apart.

Danny squints at her, the small wrinkle of a frown appearing on his face. "You think I'd kiss you if I had a girlfriend?" 

Ward doesn't actually think that. She shakes her head. "No. Sorry. I just--"

"Wish I wouldn't kiss you. Fuck. Sorry." He takes a step back. "I'm not trying to make things weird." 

It's definitely too late for that. Ward kisses him back. Danny freezes in his surprise, then his hands come up to cradle her neck. This time he kisses her as if he means it, as if he's been thinking about it just as long as Ward has.

"Let's go back to the hotel," Ward suggests.

Danny's lips are pink. He's uncharacteristically breathless. "Yeah," he agrees.

*

Danny kisses her for a long time before he pulls her onto the bed, undressing her as he goes. Danny's gentle, and just a little awkward, and he's so patient. Ward's slowly building climax takes her by surprise. He collapses next to her on the pillow, smelling of sex and sweat. 

"Hey," he says, very softly.

"Hey," Ward says, then adds, "Are you ready? For what you might find up there."

Danny pauses at that. "Okay, um. Did I miss the mark, or do you just really not do afterglow?"

"Oh my god," Ward says, her voice rising a little. "Do you want a report card? It was great, Danny. Eight out of ten."

"What do I have to do to earn a ten?" His tone is light, but Ward recognises the expression, the determined face Danny makes when he's training, and her insides flutter a little at the thought that they're going to do this again.

Ward rolls her eyes and pushes her hands against his bare chest. Danny grins at her. He remains in place against the pressure of her palms, solid as a rock. "We're climbing one of the tallest mountains in the world tomorrow, looking for a mystical city. Try to focus on something actually important."

"I am," Danny says, still looking at her with dark eyes full of unmistakable intent, and that makes her heart race too. Then he adds, "No afterglow, got it."

"I'm just saying--"

He cuts her off. "Ward. Whatever's there is what we'll find. You know?"

"No, I have no idea what that means. And please don't explain it to me," Ward says as Danny takes a breath to speak.

If the Heaven's Heart isn't there, or they can't find it, then Danny loses K'un Lun all over again. Ward wishes she'd thought of that before she'd opened her mouth.

Danny seems to hear her racing thoughts. He touches her face. It doesn't do much to still her unquiet mind, but nothing ever does. He breathes in, and she does too, and then he kisses her, sweet and warm.

"I'm not worried. But if you've changed your mind--"

"No," Ward says quickly. "I'm going with you. Whatever's there." Something in her expression makes Danny laugh, and then he's kissing her again, pushing her into the mattress with his bare hips against hers.

"Whatever's there," he agrees.

*

The weather clears just before dawn. They start their climb with the dawn. Ward's pack is heavy on her back, and Danny is beside her, calm and ready.

*fin.


End file.
